There's a special feeling around our offices today that we don't normally experience every Friday. Whether that's because of friends we know that are celebrating the end of Ramadan, or friends we know celebrating the beginning of the Iowa State Fair, or just because it's been a very long week for us, we don't know.
We do know we've all got a hopeful feeing today, especially regarding a topic near and dear to our hearts - the future of media in America, and specifically, the future of newspapers like the Washington Post.
Like many of our professional colleagues, when Jeff Bezos bought the Post earlier this week, we were a bit apprehensive. With more than fifty years of combined experience in professional paid journalism between our staff members - much of it in the field of print and newspapers - we've seen many changes in the media, and more than a handful have not been good.
After a few days and a bit more digging, we're not only feeling cautiously optimistic about Mr. Bezos. We think Jeff Bezos may just be able to provide journalism a life raft for the 21st Century.
Our web producer is the most excited about that possibility, chattering excitedly about legitimate profits from digital journalism at major newspapers, and technological innovations like "customer targeting" - something in which Mr. Bezos' company, Amazon, is a world leader. In short, "customer targeting" like that at Amazon is finding out what customers are most likely to buy - and then successfully convincing them to buy those things. Amazon and its competitors have become masters of this technique, spending comparatively little to gain a comparatively large return on their investment in advertising and promotions.
Compare that with most media advertising, which is still far too often of the "spray n' pray" variety. That's where media organizations try to hit the largest number of potential readers, listeners, and viewers in a given geographic area - then pray enough of those potential customers follow through to buy the products and services of their advertisers.
It would be fantastic if all media advertising would be as efficient and effective as Amazon and its competitors are. If it was, media organizations might be able to charge significantly more for their advertising, which could fuel significantly more great journalism. Small media organizations might even be able to license top-notch targeting tools from larger organizations like The Washington Post, allowing them to find ways to make digital journalism work in their small, local area.
Technological tools like these are exactly the kinds of advances in media our web producer has been raving about for more than a decade now.
Frankly, we don't know if Bezos' plan for the Washington Post looks anything like what we've suggested here. We're not 100% sure if he or anyone can bring to the news industry the kinds of social and technical innovation necessary for high-quality, profitable news media. We're not even sure if the idea of "super targeting" like we described above will work for smaller local media outlets. The crucial jobs of covering stories like your local city council meetings and high school sports events might still end up falling to some dedicated blogger, if there isn't enough money in it.
What we are certain of is that Jeff Bezos' purchase of The Washington Post - along with other major technological shifts going on in the industry right now - have given us all the hope for a better media landscape in the relatively near future. Quality journalism might even become a reliable source for an honest wage once again, a trend that's not just good for us, but good for America too.
If that kind of hope isn't a reason to feel yourself lifted up, even just a little, we're not sure what is.
Friday, August 9, 2013
Thursday, August 8, 2013
If It Ain't Broke...
As our regular readers know, our staff tends to travel a good bit, both nationally and internationally. No matter where we go, we often end up running into other Nebraskans, and we'll often end up discussing topics near and dear to our hearts, like Husker sports or Lincoln's Haymarket development, or our favorite Nebraska restaurants like Valentino's, Misty's, and Runza. Of course, most true Nebraskans also know our home state's unofficial motto: "If it ain't broke, don't 'fix' it."
We mention that unofficial motto and the other Nebraska bona fides today, in light of the latest developments this week from the Nebraska Tax Modernization Committee.
As we've pointed out more than once this year, it's obvious that Gov. Heineman would prefer the Nebraska Tax Modernization Committee simply rubber stamp his plan to eliminate Nebraska's income tax - a plan that's not only unnecessary, but frankly unworkable. Those facts haven't seemed to matter to the Governor, though, or to other special interest groups, like the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce.
Like a mechanic with his eye on your car and his mind on your wallet, no matter what the facts say, supporters of scrapping Nebraska's income tax have kept pushing to "fix" a system that didn't need fixing – a very un-Nebraskan way of thinking.
So it was with both surprise and and satisfaction that we noted the news coming out of Nebraska's Tax Modernization Committee this week, specifically from the committee's head, State Sen. Galen Hadley of Kearney. If you're unfamiliar with the former mayor of Kearney, Hadley has a long history of siding with both the Governor and the Chamber, especially on matters that involve tax cuts.
Hadley went into this weeks meetings a proponent of eliminating the state's income tax. Yet, after climbing under the metaphorical hood of the state's budget with other members of the Committee and tax experts from all over the nation, Hadley admitted that Nebraska's tax system didn't really need much fixing after all.
That doesn't mean the Cornhusker state's tax system couldn't do with some tweaks - for example, eliminating tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals that aren't truly benefitting the state's citizens. That also doesn't mean that extremists like 2014 gubernatorial candidate State Sen. Charlie Janssen aren't going to prance around Nebraska, holding their own events to try to convince Nebraskans to do something major with their state tax system that just doesn't need to be done.
Still, Sen. Hadley appears to have joined other members of the committee like Sen. Pete Pirsch of Omaha who seem to have stayed pretty close to Nebraska's unofficial motto - and who deserve at least a note of praise from us in these digital pages for their wise caution.
After all, as all true Nebraskans know, if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it.
We mention that unofficial motto and the other Nebraska bona fides today, in light of the latest developments this week from the Nebraska Tax Modernization Committee.
As we've pointed out more than once this year, it's obvious that Gov. Heineman would prefer the Nebraska Tax Modernization Committee simply rubber stamp his plan to eliminate Nebraska's income tax - a plan that's not only unnecessary, but frankly unworkable. Those facts haven't seemed to matter to the Governor, though, or to other special interest groups, like the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce.
Like a mechanic with his eye on your car and his mind on your wallet, no matter what the facts say, supporters of scrapping Nebraska's income tax have kept pushing to "fix" a system that didn't need fixing – a very un-Nebraskan way of thinking.
So it was with both surprise and and satisfaction that we noted the news coming out of Nebraska's Tax Modernization Committee this week, specifically from the committee's head, State Sen. Galen Hadley of Kearney. If you're unfamiliar with the former mayor of Kearney, Hadley has a long history of siding with both the Governor and the Chamber, especially on matters that involve tax cuts.
Hadley went into this weeks meetings a proponent of eliminating the state's income tax. Yet, after climbing under the metaphorical hood of the state's budget with other members of the Committee and tax experts from all over the nation, Hadley admitted that Nebraska's tax system didn't really need much fixing after all.
That doesn't mean the Cornhusker state's tax system couldn't do with some tweaks - for example, eliminating tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals that aren't truly benefitting the state's citizens. That also doesn't mean that extremists like 2014 gubernatorial candidate State Sen. Charlie Janssen aren't going to prance around Nebraska, holding their own events to try to convince Nebraskans to do something major with their state tax system that just doesn't need to be done.
Still, Sen. Hadley appears to have joined other members of the committee like Sen. Pete Pirsch of Omaha who seem to have stayed pretty close to Nebraska's unofficial motto - and who deserve at least a note of praise from us in these digital pages for their wise caution.
After all, as all true Nebraskans know, if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
In Need Of A Fix
If you're a fan of baseball like some members of our staff, you were probably well prepared for the stack of suspensions that Major League Baseball handed out on Monday. Maybe you even felt a lump in your throat, or had a slight twist in your stomach when the punishments for drug use came down. We saw players we've enjoyed (and maybe even cheered for) revealed to be like so many other pro athletes caught cheating - just another group of technologically enhanced frauds.
There's a part of us that looks at the crumbling metaphorical pillars of our iconic national pastime and wishes that America still had baseball heros like Aaron, Maris, Ruth, and Robinson. Today we'd all be lucky to even get another Cal Ripken Jr.
Instead, we get guys like Alex Rodriguez, the one-time golden boy of professional baseball, now "the party guest that won't leave," in the words of USA Today's Christine Brennan.
Whether he stays or goes, Rodriguez may be just the kind of hero America currently deserves.
As Dave Zirin of The Nation noted earlier this week, the hypocrisy of Major League Baseball on the issue of performance enhancing drugs is legendary. That said, Alex Rodriguez is to Major League Baseball's doping scandals, as Lyndee England was to the Abu Ghraib scandal. We'd even be willing to go further and say that as duplicitous as Rodriguez has been about using banned substances, he's got nothing on modern America, a nation that has too often played a similar hypocritical position.
Just look at the recent headlines if you have any doubts.
After being conned into war by Dick Cheney and his chickenhawks, Americans spent most of the last decade supposedly making Iraq "safe for democracy." Yet, since the U.S. military left Iraq bombs go off there every day, killing scores of innocent civilians.
Our "Department of Justice" says the criminal banks on Wall Street, like Bank of America, screwed the nation with the mortgage crisis in 2008. While we're glad the DOJ is finally going after institutions like Bank of America, it's five years after the crime, and they're only going after a small fraction of the damage those Wall Street criminals caused.
The President was also on The Tonight Show last night saying America doesn't really have a domestic spying program - and by the letter of the law that's true. That said, there's been enough evidence recently revealed to know that too many of the spooks in our Federal government intelligence communities have traded their responsibilities over domestic surveilliance to private contractors, like pro baseball teams trade players - and many of those private contractors followed the letter of the law about as well as A-Rod followed the MLB rules.
America does need heroes again, like those our nation once had in Major League Baseball - maybe more now than ever before.
We're just not sure that the America we live in today deserves better heroes than the ones we're getting already.
There's a part of us that looks at the crumbling metaphorical pillars of our iconic national pastime and wishes that America still had baseball heros like Aaron, Maris, Ruth, and Robinson. Today we'd all be lucky to even get another Cal Ripken Jr.
Instead, we get guys like Alex Rodriguez, the one-time golden boy of professional baseball, now "the party guest that won't leave," in the words of USA Today's Christine Brennan.
Whether he stays or goes, Rodriguez may be just the kind of hero America currently deserves.
As Dave Zirin of The Nation noted earlier this week, the hypocrisy of Major League Baseball on the issue of performance enhancing drugs is legendary. That said, Alex Rodriguez is to Major League Baseball's doping scandals, as Lyndee England was to the Abu Ghraib scandal. We'd even be willing to go further and say that as duplicitous as Rodriguez has been about using banned substances, he's got nothing on modern America, a nation that has too often played a similar hypocritical position.
Just look at the recent headlines if you have any doubts.
After being conned into war by Dick Cheney and his chickenhawks, Americans spent most of the last decade supposedly making Iraq "safe for democracy." Yet, since the U.S. military left Iraq bombs go off there every day, killing scores of innocent civilians.
Our "Department of Justice" says the criminal banks on Wall Street, like Bank of America, screwed the nation with the mortgage crisis in 2008. While we're glad the DOJ is finally going after institutions like Bank of America, it's five years after the crime, and they're only going after a small fraction of the damage those Wall Street criminals caused.
The President was also on The Tonight Show last night saying America doesn't really have a domestic spying program - and by the letter of the law that's true. That said, there's been enough evidence recently revealed to know that too many of the spooks in our Federal government intelligence communities have traded their responsibilities over domestic surveilliance to private contractors, like pro baseball teams trade players - and many of those private contractors followed the letter of the law about as well as A-Rod followed the MLB rules.
America does need heroes again, like those our nation once had in Major League Baseball - maybe more now than ever before.
We're just not sure that the America we live in today deserves better heroes than the ones we're getting already.
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